


alone

by jerry_seinfeld



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 19:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11341896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerry_seinfeld/pseuds/jerry_seinfeld
Summary: not everyone gets their rom-com happy ending





	alone

**Author's Note:**

> i listened to The Woods by Hollow Coves while writing this. not because of the lyrics, but the song defined the overall tone of this work. it's on soundcloud. i really think listening to it would help a lot to understand where i was coming from.

“Can I please stay here?”

Chanyeol never thought this day would come. He remembers his teenaged self dreaming about this man uttering even a letter of his name, let alone asking him for something. Something that Chanyeol will gladly give him. 

Chanyeol has always been weak-willed. He guesses that it started with his girl cousins and sister. He was the youngest, with 5 years of difference in age from the youngest older kid. He’d steal cookies for them and often get in trouble for it. Then he’d steal makeup from his mom. Then alcohol. Then money. 

Chanyeol hated it, hated it, hated it. But when his sister would give him puppy eyes and say that she’ll let him tag along (which she never did), his spine grew weak and he’d go wherever he needed to go to steal whatever he needed to steal. The look on his parent’s face when they’d caught him stealing a twenty wasn’t worth the puppy eyes and the promise that he should have learned was fake.

But that didn’t stop him. He remembers his high school friend (if you can really call him that) always begging him for tutoring at the expense of Chanyeol’s own study-time, always asking him to cover for him while he partied. And now? Now Jongdae is a D-level singer and Chanyeol works at a mundane IT office job where people continue to walk all over him. 

His first (and last) girlfriend used his naivety in the same way his sister and ‘friend’ had. She’d get him to buy her drinks and take them to parties where she’d screw other guys while Chanyeol stayed at home. Alone. Playing video games and hoping that she was at least having a good time.

Perhaps he took that betrayal as a sign to never like girls again. That single experience made him realize there was nothing all that special about them that he found himself deeply attracted to. 

Then, during his first year of college, he found what he was truly attracted to. Something in the form of a 174 cm tall boy with beautiful fluffy brown hair and soft black-lined eyes and an adorable smile and he was, so, so, so perfect.

And Chanyeol loved him from the moment he saw him. But poor Chanyeol wasn’t the only one to notice this perfection in the boy. People immediately took a liking to him. Lots of people. People Chanyeol could never compare to. No, the goofy, big-eared kid that told shitty puns and studied too much couldn’t be a study-partner, friend, lover, or anything more meaningful to Byun Baekhyun, simply because Chanyeol wasn’t anything like Baekhyun. 

And Baekhyun didn’t know Chanyeol’s name. But, sure, because they ‘weren’t right for each other’ (Chanyeol’s words to himself when he was alone in his dorm crying because he didn't have anyone in his life that meant something to him)

Chanyeol loved Baekhyun, but Baekhyun couldn’t care less about Chanyeol. He still loved him, though, because Baekhyun was everything that Chanyeol wanted. 

Chanyeol wanted late-night drives through the outskirts of town with alternative music emitted softly from the car radio because if it was too loud, they wouldn’t be able to hear the other talk. He wanted casual trips to the children’s playground simply because they wanted to go. He wanted non-stop conversation and music always playing and someone to talk to when he was sad and he wanted to feel loved and cared for. 

But all he got was unrequited love and disappointment. Lots and lots of disappointment. 

It wasn’t that Chanyeol didn’t have friends. He did, of course he did. They were people to smile and laugh with. But none of them stuck around when the laughter died down and the smiles fell. 

They were temporary. 

But Baekhyun? Baekhyun was forever.

Baekhyun and his bright smiles and his angelic voice and his unspoken promise of something Chanyeol didn’t know, but was more than excited to have. And what did he get again?

Unrequited love and lots of disappointment. 

So much disappointment that it crushed Chanyeol. And by college graduation, Chanyeol wasn’t the goofy kid who told shitty puns anymore. 

Chanyeol was the kid who had scars on his thighs from lonely nights. Chanyeol was the kid who couldn’t pick up his guitar anymore. Chanyeol was the kid who couldn’t get out of bed in the morning because what did he have to get up for?

Nothing. No one.

These feelings persisted long after college ended. They swelled in the pit of his stomach and refused to go away and the darkness in his mind consumed him until he was dead, dead, dead inside. 

On a Thursday night, Chanyeol was left with anything and everything but the desire to go home. So he stayed at work. He doesn’t remember exactly what happened that night. But he woke up in a blindingly white hospital room, with blindingly white lights and a blindingly white pain in his head.

“Park Chanyeol? Do you know why you’re here?” Chanyeol looked up at the nurse. She had a kind but worried expression. Her eyes were warm. Her face was soft. “You overdosed on Naproxen Sodium. A janitor found you. Can you tell us why you overdosed?” Chanyeol swallowed. His mouth was very, very dry. His lips stuck together when he tried to open them and it was a weird feeling.

“I…wanted to go away.” He breathed. “I wanted it all to…to…go away.” Chanyeol’s eyes weren’t focusing on the nurse and the movement of the room made him feel dizzy. He looked at his hands, focused on the strip of plastic around his wrist. Chanyeol, Park.

“Sir, your sister is here. I’m going to call in a psychiatrist. We’re going to have to keep you in the psych ward for at least 72 hours,” Chanyeol’s head shot back up, despite the protest from his brain banging around his skull.

“No!” He shouted, latching onto her wrist, “No, no, no. Just let me die, please!” He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want this at all. He doesn’t want to be here for another second, let alone 72 hours. His head hurts and his stomach burns and he just wants to die. “Why can’t you just let me die?”

“Sir, please let go.”

“No! You’re going to try and…try and fix me, aren’t you? Suicide watch, right? Please, please, don’t do that. Please! Just kill me. Please, just fucking kill me!”

Chanyeol does remember leaving the hospital. He remembers not seeing his sister. Good riddance, he supposes. 

He remembers going back to work. He remembers seeing the janitor every once in a while and he couldn’t help but feel betrayed. He remembers flushing his pills down the toilet. He remembers erasing the memory of what he did, ignoring the glances from his co-workers when he spaces out. Ignoring the way that his boss makes him go home at 5 everyday. Ignoring the way he feels. 

Until the day he hears a thump at his door. Until the day he checks the peephole and sees fluffy brown hair and black-lined eyes again. Until the day he pulls on the handle and yanks the door open.

“Can I please stay here?”

“How do you…what…” Chanyeol takes a breath, gathering the words in his head, “What are you doing here?”

Baekhyun huffs, wringing his hands, “Look, man, I’ve been around the entire block. My ex-boyfriend kicked me out of the apartment and I don’t have anyone to stay with. I can pay you back in any way shape or form except actual cash. I’m totally broke.”

“Look, Baekhyun, I-“

“Wait.” Baekhyun furrows his brows and cocks his head and Chanyeol can’t help but think he looks cute like that. “How do you know my name?”

…

Of course. Baekhyun isn’t looking for Chanyeol. Baekhyun doesn’t need Chanyeol personally. Baekhyun doesn’t even know Chanyeol. Has never known Chanyeol.

“Sorry, I just…I went to college with you?”

“Oh. College. What a fucking waste of time that was.” A beat. Baekhyun sighs again. “Can I come in?”

Maybe in another world where Chanyeol wasn’t spineless and feared saying no to the love of his life, Baekhyun wouldn’t have walked in and plopped himself on the couch. Chanyeol wouldn’t have had to hide the pounding of his heart and the way he shook beside Baekhyun.

Chanyeol wouldn’t have poured his heart into making some food so Baekhyun could eat and setting up the couch with nice sheets and a fuzzy blanket only to, you guessed it, be left with heartbreak when he woke up in the morning and the sheets and blankets were folded and Baekhyun was gone. 

Also disappointment. Lots and lots of disappointment.

**Author's Note:**

> so i really wanted to say that im so sorry for this, because i know that most people don't like unhappy endings. i know that i hate reading them, but i was always so sick of reading happy endings where they fall in love and everything's great because it honestly makes me feel so bad about myself and im in a mindset where i dont need/ can't handle more shit
> 
> shoutout to me for 88% of the inspo thx fam


End file.
